“On a Thursday evening, after all of our work was finished, we received an emergency call. The plea for help was for Tommy, a young boy from Amboin who had fallen on his spear and was three days away from a hospital by canoe. We knew we would not make it back to Wewak before sundown, so our team had to make the tough decision to wait until the next morning to pick up the young boy. We continued to pray fervently during that evening’s Bible study for God to watch over Tommy’s health overnight.

The next morning brought us terrible weather with lots of rain and low clouds. It wasn’t until 11am that our team had a break in the weather safe enough to start the 60-mile journey to pick up Tommy. We battled the weather the entire way. After finally landing the plane on the river, Chris Cooke assessed Tommy and we loaded him and his father, Elvis, on board. As we flew back toward Wewak, Chris performed an ultrasound and found fluid in the boy’s chest cavity. To aid in his breathing, we lowered our altitude for the remainder of the trip back.

We landed in Wewak just minutes before the field was shut down with a heavy rain that obscured everything. Volunteers Paul and Daniel Forehand had arrived that morning and met us at the hangar to help transfer Tommy from the plane to the ambulance.

Before Tommy was discharged, we were thankful that we had a chance to pray and share God’s love with him and his father.